whetstonefires:wrangletangle:the-books-we-travel:fuzzykittengladiator:borderlineanders:mikkeneko:bra
whetstonefires:wrangletangle:the-books-we-travel:fuzzykittengladiator:borderlineanders:mikkeneko:bramblepatch:sourwolf-loki-destiel-221b:iridescentoracle:animate-mush:malibujojo:pippin4242:lulasseth:imsorryimovedtoaidanturnerspants:hash-tag-whatever:Merry: confused aweFrodo: confused aweSam: confused awePippin: finally i’m getting the respect i deserve from these peasants so accurate i am choking on my carrot. this is making me giggle harder than it should. I love Pippin so much.I don’t think there will come time when I’m not reblogging this. Sorry guys. no no no you guys don’t understand, Pippin is someone really important in the Shire! The books don’t talk about it a lot, and the movies won’t touch that stuff with a bargepole, but Pippin will be inheriting land rights to about a quarter of the Shire. He’s second in line to becoming military leader of all Hobbits. His dad is currently in charge of that stuff, but he’s completely aware of it, and educated for it, and that’s why he’s such an over privileged little shit in the books.I thought it was a shame the movies didn’t talk about class differences in the Shire. Also puts M&P stealing food in an uglier light.To be fair, at the time of the Party, Pippin would have been 12, which puts it back into a more acceptable light. And they’re stealing food from Bilbo, a wealthy and eccentric family member, which again makes things a bit different.But yes, when they call Pippin Ernil i Perrianath - Prince of the Halflings - they are actually completely spot on.And when Pippin tells Bergil “my father farms the land around Tuckborough” he’s deliberately downplaying his class so that he can greet the boy as an equal rather than a superior. It’s Pippin’s most adult moment in the series. Bergil is engaging in a status contest which Pippin can totally win - but instead chooses not to compete. Pippin is a gilded and spoiled lordling in the Shire, but he becomes a Man of Gondor.Yeah, to add a bit of unnecessary trivia/level of preciseness, Frodo is the oldest of the four; he was born in 2968, was (obviously) 33 at the time of the Party, and so he’s 51 here. Sam’s second-oldest; born in 2980, he was 21 when Bilbo left and is 39 at this point. Merry’s two years younger than Sam, making him 18 or 19 in 3001, when the Party took place, and Pippin was born in 2990, so he was actually 10 or 11 during the Party, and during this scene they’re ~37 and ~29, respectively.So yeah, Pippin’s the youngest by a lot. Plus, taking hobbit aging into account, he really is still in the equivalent of his teens; remember the Party was half to celebrate Frodo’s coming-of-age at 33, and Pippin’s around twenty years younger than Frodo. This fucked me up. I didn’t read the books and in the movie it was shown like Frodo took off with the ring like 2 days after Bilbo’s gone away, but it was 17 years after that. OMFG.Also worth noting that “Merry and Pippin stealing food” isn’t in the book - raiding Farmer Maggot’s fields, specifically the mushrooms, is something Frodo used to do when he was a kid, before his parents died and he moved to Hobbiton to live with Bilbo. Frodo’s still afraid of Maggot’s guard dogs, but the farmer himself is sympathetic and helpful when he finds Frodo & Co. cutting through his field.And this is specifically invoked in the books at the Council of Elrond, where Elrond argues against Pippin in particular going, because he is so young. He’s okay with Merry going but wants to keep Pippin in Rivendell. Elrond has serious misgivings against sending an early-teenager off to face the Shadow, and given what happens to Pippin in The Two Towers, he was not wrong.@cyrefinns@the-books-we-travelThis is just so great. I just–I can’t.Merry is also a prince of sorts - his father is Master of Buckland, which is the semi-autonomous boundary community between the Brandywine river and the Old Forest (never, alas, discussed in the movies). Merry and Pippin are friends in the books in part because they’re of relatively equal status and in part because they’re cousins (like all nobs, Shire nobs mostly marry each other). However, the books also clearly make Merry the Responsible One, even though he’s only been a full adult for four years. (Think early 20s in human terms.) Merry buys and prepares the house at Crickhollow. Merry figures out the secret of the ring before Bilbo even gives it to Frodo, but Merry keeps Bilbo’s secret. Merry convinces Sam to spy on Frodo. Merry explains that they’re all joining Frodo on the Quest, whether Frodo wants them to or not. Merry cautions about the Old Forest and doesn’t go down to drink in the taproom at the Prancing Pony. So in the books, Merry isn’t Pippin’s partner in pranks - instead, Merry and Pippin spend all their time together on the Quest because Merry’s looking after his younger cousin. Can you imagine what his mother would say if he came home without Pippin? Merry can, and that’s why he takes some pretty absurd personal risks during the books to make sure that doesn’t happen. Like, he literally rides into battle on the back of someone else’s horse, in disguise, because Pippin is probably somewhere in that battle.Merry is 99%* common sense unless Pippin is involved, and then he is 100% save/rescue/protect/support Pippin. The character growth and maturation we see in Merry in the movies isn’t in the books; instead he has almost the exact opposite arc of becoming an extreme risk-taker, driven by his protective instincts.(*The other 1% stabbed a ringwraith in the calf that one time, but we can argue that this was due to a natural expansion of Merry’s protective instincts toward Eowyn, with whom he’d bonded quite a lot recently, and toward Theoden, who he deeply respected as being kind of like his dad.)^ALL OF THIS. The irony of Pippin’s title of Ernil i Pherianath being that Gondor called him that because he used informal grammar with everyone, even Denethor, because inferior-to-superior inflections had vanished from Shire Westron. He was accidentally giving himself airs while trying to be humble, which just made him look better.But although hobbits don’t stand much on ceremony, they certainly have their hierarchies, and Merry and Pippin are in fact near the top–even though they’re young enough they’ve never had to deal with any of the responsibilities of being important. Their inherited statuses are a factor in why their rallying of the countryside in the Scouring of the Shire (also not appearing in the movies) goes off so smoothly. When the Thane’s son or the heir to Brandy Hall sends out a call to arms, that’s a very different thing than just two lads who’ve gotten hold of some weapons doing it.Bonus: Sam is also recognized as central to the Scouring and even more to the recovery efforts, because of the magic item Galadriel gave him, and gets elected Mayor of Hobbiton. Part of the reason Frodo left him his house (besides, you know, a lack of anybody else he would want to have it) is that owning such a fine smial (and by extension presumably the rental properties adjoining) allowed him to cement his social elevation to gentlehobbit. -- source link